Third senior journalist at The Daily Telegraph opposes Abu Dhabi-backed takeover of the paper

A senior journalist on The Daily Telegraph has become the third member of its editorial team to object to the paper's proposed take-over by a UAE-backed fund.

Janet Daley wrote in the paper's pages that RedBird IMI, which is funded by the rulers of Abu Dhabi, 'must not be permitted to take ownership of this newspaper'.

Ms Daley said: 'In a free society no government – including the country's elected one – should own a news media outlet. The power wielded by a state must be, always and without qualification, separate from the presentation and analysis of information in the public domain.

'That principle has been one of the distinguishing differences between tyrannies and democracies in the modern world.'

Former Telegraph editor Charles Moore has also spoken out against the deal. And last night, former Prime Minister Liz Truss also urged the Government to protect The Telegraph's editorial independence.

Ms Truss said it was vital that it was able to publish 'freely' after Ministers decided to launch a review of the deal amid fears of censorship and foreign interference.

She told the Telegraph: 'I want the Government to ensure that any ownership of the press enables them to freely publish according to what they believe to be the case.'

The remarks come after associate editor Camilla Tominey warned in the paper's pages that the newspaper should not be owned by a 'sexist regime', and claimed the controversial deal 'doesn't pass the sniff test' because 'the UAE falls short of Western standards and values'.

Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer has ordered media regulator Ofcom to investigate if the deal with the fund risked 'the need for accurate presentation of news and free expression of opinion in newspapers'.

In Ms Tominey's article, headlined 'A misogynist foreign state must not be allowed to own The Telegraph', she said that Ms Frazer should recognise that a newspaper 'promoting women as key columnists' might 'struggle to operate under the guise of any authoritarian regime that implements sexist laws'.

The Spectator magazine, which is also part of the proposed deal, and is edited by Telegraph columnist Fraser Nelson, has also argued that 'it is not 'sentimental' to be uncomfortable at the prospect of Britain's oldest weekly magazine being snapped up by the Emirates'.

Ms Daley wrote in her article that newspapers were an essential to avoid having a 'public discourse dominated by the grotesque absurdities of 'deep fake' video clips, manipulated photographs, unchecked hysterical testimony and outright deception... overseen by unqualified and possibly irresponsible social media billionaires who are accountable to no one.'